Copyright
Jan M. ZiolkowskiISBN
Language
- English
THEMA
- NHDJ
- JBGB
- DSB
- D
- NHD
BISAC
- HIS037010
- REL033000
- LIT011000
- SOC011000
- LCO008000
Keywords
- Titivillus
- Medieval demons and folklore
- Medieval manuscript culture
- History of scribal and typographical errors
- Medieval religious and literary traditions
Titivillus, the Devil of Error: An Anthology
Vol. 4: Literature and Culture, Print and Beyond Names and Nouns, Latin and English
Meet Titivillus: a minor devil with an extraordinary afterlife. Emerging in medieval Europe as a demon who collected the mangled words of careless chanters and recorded the gossip of inattentive churchgoers, he later evolved into the mischievous spirit blamed for scribal slips, printing errors and typographical blunders. Jan Ziolkowski’s Titivillus, the Devil of Error: An Anthology traces this remarkable transformation across more than eight centuries.Volume 4 follows Titivillus from the age of print into modern literature, scholarship and popular culture. Appearing in works by writers and artists from Rabelais and Melville to W. H. Auden, he sheds his medieval sack and scroll to become the patron demon of scribes, calligraphers, typographers and editors. His career extends into role-playing games, comics, digital culture and the age of autocorrect and artificial intelligence, demonstrating his remarkable ability to adapt to new technologies and media. The volume also investigates the demon’s unstable name, its many spellings and proposed etymologies, and the transformation of Titivillus and related forms from proper names into common nouns. Bringing together literary history, lexicography, folklore and book culture, Volume 4 concludes the anthology by showing how errors, stories and images travel across languages, genres and centuries—and why this resilient devil remains an appealing scapegoat wherever words are written, printed or digitally produced.
Contributors
Jan M. Ziolkowski
(author)Jan Ziolkowski (A.B. Princeton University, Ph.D. University of Cambridge) has focused his research and teaching on the literature of the Middle Ages, especially in Latin. His special interests have included such areas as the classical tradition, the verbal arts of grammar and rhetoric, the appropriation of folktales, and the Latinization of Germanic epic. Additionally, he has developed broad interests in medieval revivalism down to the present. He has published many books on literature and culture, including interpretation, editions, translations, and reference works. He has published seven books with OBP, all devoted to The Juggler of Notre Dame. At Harvard he chaired Comparative Literature, the Committee on Medieval Studies, and (fleetingly) Classics, and founded the Medieval Studies Seminar, which still exists. He directed Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, a Harvard centre in Washington, D.C. Ziolkowski is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academia Europaea, and Medieval Academy of America, and member of the American Philosophical Society, Austrian Academy of Sciences, and Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. His research been supported by the American Academy in Rome, NEH, American Council for Learned Societies, Guggenheim Foundation.